Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-San Episode 5: Overcoming the Trials and Tribulations of the Bookshop

Honda-San continues to confuse me in that I’m coming to the conclusion that the booksellers themselves in this story aren’t sure whether or not they actually want to sell books. On the one hand, they enjoy it when they set the books out and satisfy a customer, on the other hand, having plenty of sales, needing restocking, or an author doing a signing leading to potential major sales, are causes for panic. It leaves you wondering where they actually sit on the whole idea of making sales.

That said, it does make for some great comedy moments as we see Honda dealing with three situations in this anime, most of which involving customer inquiries or a lot of sales all at once. For a skull, Honda-san is pretty expressive. Still his freak out at the idea of an author tweeting which might lead to phone calls and yet more sales was kind of insane because you would think that it would be a good  thing for the visiting author to actually bring in more customers.

One thing that can’t be ignored though is that five episodes in and this one is already starting to feel a little repetitive. Certainly it is fun, but there just isn’t that much depth to the set ups and basically each situation ends up boiling down to much the same as every other situation. Honda also reacts the same experiencing very little growth so far as a character (much as you would expect from a short comedy but it limits opportunities for variety).

Still, with its short run time and fairly interesting take on book stores, this one is still worth a bit of a watch even if it isn’t a must see title. Hopefully it manages to keep adding enough variety to make it to the end of the season.

Thanks for reading
Karandi James

Consider supporting the blog by:

• Episode 1 – Just Your Everyday Bookstore
• Episode 2 – Too Many Books in the Bookstore
• Episode 3 – Sales People and Recommendations
• Episode 4 – We’ve All Been There
• Episode 5 – Overcoming the Trials and Tribulations of the Bookshop
• Episodes 6 + 7 – What Happens When Our Skeleton Bookseller Leaves the Bookshop
• Episode 8 – The People You Meet At The Bookshop
• Episode 9 – Book-lovers Can Relate To The Pain in Honda-San This Week
• Episode 10 – Were You Considering a Job in the Bookstore?
• Episode 11 – Bored at The Bookstore? Just Add Monsters
• Episode 12 – Tis The Season To Be Jolly and Wear Funny Hats